Over the years, I’ve handled a number of dog attack cases, but last week, I read a story about a 3 year old Alabama girl who was injured when she was attacked by a neighbor’s pig.

I don’t want to make light of the story because it sounds like the girl suffered severe injuries. But it did get me wondering what the law is on pig attacks. Would a claim against a pig owner be the same as a claim against a dog owner?

Trying to satisfy my curiosity, I did a quick search on Westlaw to see what the law on this issue says. Amazingly, I don’t think there are any Texas cases involving pig attacks (though I did see something that said pig bites are fourth most common bites reported by vets behind cats, dogs and horses).

After some shrewd legal analysis, I’ve come to the opinion that elements of a pig attack case are the same as a dog attack case. I’ll spare you the details, but know that what a person making a claim here could probably pursue a strict liability claim if the pig has a history of violence or dangerous behavior or a claim based on the pig owner’s failure to properly handle and secure the pig.

If the story is correct, that the pig has a history of getting out and causing trouble, then the victim probably has a good chance of prevailing under Texas law. But this actual case happened in Alabama. Who knows what the law is there (and I’m certainly not going to check)?

As you may have heard, the study looked at brains of 111 former NFL players, and 110 of the brains had evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

I’ve been trying to process the results, and I’ve reached a couple of conclusions.

First, you have to be careful with the results. The only way to truly test for CTE is by doing an autopsy once the person is deceased. In this case, all of the brains in the study were donated by the players’ families. Obviously, most of the brains would have been donated because the family had a concern about the player’s condition before the player’s death. Even the doctors who did the study confirm this.

Second, regardless of what I said above, the numbers are startling. This is a lot of players who have had problems, and it’s something that we can’t ignore. For a long time, there was a debate about whether CTE was even a real disease. These numbers, along with other similar research, show that ti is a real problem.

Third, for safety’s sake, we need to make sure that we’re not limiting the focus to the NFL or even football. With regards to CTE, it isn’t limited to football, soccer and hockey and at least one former major league baseball player have been diagnosed with CTE. We need to looking at ways to make all sports safer in terms of protecting the brain.

Beyond that, we can’t let our attention be focused on CTE and sports. Many, many more people will sustain severe brain injuries in car wrecks and falls than in sports. We need research to continue to help us determine how brain injuries can be limited in the average person and not just in the athlete.

For more information on the new study, you can read the following articles:

We obviously represent a lot of people who are injured in car wrecks so I’m always interested in what happens on the driverless car front. This story presenting real life drama and corporate espionage in the driverless car industry in today’s Austin American Statesman caught my attention.

The story centers on the relationship between Uber and Waymo, the driverless car company spun off from Google.

According to Waymo, Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo engineer, downloaded thousands of confidential files before leaving Waymo. Levandowski is alleged to have then set up his own companies based on this technology, which he eventually sold to Uber for $680 million. Levandowski and Uber were alleged to have planned the purchase of these companies even before Levandowski left Waymo.

Naturally, Waymo sued Uber and Levandowski, and yesterday a judge found that there was evidence to support the allegations. As a result, the Court ruled that Levandowski can’t work for Uber on the system related to the stolen information and that Uber can’t use the material and must return all the material to Waymo. Last week, the judge apparently referred the case to federal prosecutors, certainly not a good indicator for Levandowski or Uber.

It will be interesting to see how the ruling affects these competitors, who have been racing each other to develop their driverless cars.

My University of Texas football team hasn’t been on the cutting edge of winning the last few years (and we’re hoping that’s changing), but we are on the cutting edge of trying to protect players from brain injuries.

It’s no secret that an increasingly difficulty issue in football is the rise (or at least heightened awareness of) brain injuries suffered by players. There are some things that can be done, such as teaching proper technique and making sure that helmets are state of the art, but until now, what a school or coach can do to protect kids has been largely limited.

Now however, Riddell and Texas are taking a big step towards safety by including monitoring devices in players’ helmets. Starting this year, all University of Texas players’ helmets will have sensors that send signals to the trainers’ hand held devices when the player sustains a significant hit in the head. The trainer can then monitor the player and look for signs of a concussion or head injury. Texas will be the first Power 5 school to provide this technology to every player.

This is important. While concussions are bad, one of the biggest risks in sports is known as second impact syndrome. Second impact syndrome occurs when a player sustains a significant blow before the brain has healed from the original concussion. The second impact, which can occur minutes, days or weeks after the first concussion, typically causes much more severe problems than the original impact. While some concussions are obvious, some people don’t show signs of symptoms until hours or even days after the event. Thus, the ability to monitor the impact of a hit in real time, will make it much easier to look for problems in real time, minimizing the risk of second impact syndrome.

Now, if we can only find some technology to help us find a few more wins each year…..

Recently, I came across a study that really quantifies the problem I discussed.

The study, primarily led by several doctors from the University of Washington, was laid out in an article entitled Accuracy of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Diagnosis, which was published in the August 2008 issue of the Archives of Physical Medical Rehabilitation.

The article starts by noting:

Accurate identification and diagnosis of a mild TBI is the first step toward providing clinical care.

Unfortunately, despite the accurate diagnosis of a brain injury being so important, the study found that emergency rooms are not very good at making the diagnoses.

The study looked at 197 patients who had been to emergency rooms. They looked at medical records, and in some cases interviewed the patients, to determine whether they patients had a brain injury, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control mild Traumatic Brain Injury work group. The researchers then took those patients who were diagnosed with a brain injury and looked at the patients’ emergency room records to see what was diagnosed in the emergency room.

The results were startling.

The emergency room doctors failed to make a diagnoses of a head injury or concussion in 56% of the patients who were later determined to have a brain injury.

That’s a stunning number.

There are some things that can help improve the accuracy of the emergency department physicians. If the patient complained in the emergency room about confusion, feeling dazed, or having memory problems, then the diagnoses was more accurate. However, even with those findings, the emergency department still missed the diagnoses on 37% of the patients. That’s still a substantial number of patients who have a brain injury that doctors are missing.

Oddly, the emergency room physicians’ diagnoses weren’t dramatically better even when the patient reported a loss of consciousness — which should be a red flag. The doctors still failed to make the proper diagnoses of a head injury in about 50% of the patients who had told the doctors that they had lost consciousness.

This means that you have to be diligent about noticing symptoms. I’ve repeatedly written that misdiagnoses is a problem and that the best way to find the problem and to get proper treatment for the problem is for someone close to the person to look for symptoms.

To learn more details about potential symptoms, you can read our other articles:

The April 2017 issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma reports on a new study about post-concussion syndrome.

The study followed 110 patients who had post-concussive syndrome symptoms for more than three months, and the findings were stunning. Of those patients, only 27% made a full recovery. Of the 27% who made a recovery, 67% made a recovery within the first year. And no one who had symptoms over three years ever made a recovery.

For those groups that didn’t recover, the continuing symptoms (in order of frequency) were:

Most insurance companies argue that brain injuries typically heal themselves and symptoms disappear after six months or a year. The insurance companies use that argument to reduce the value of the claim.

This study refutes that. If a client has had symptoms lasting more than three months, then this study is evidence that the client will likely never make a full recovery. Obviously, if an injury is permanent then the value of the case is higher.

The study is also interesting because it has a good list of symptoms of a brain injury. It’s important for people to know these symptoms to help them recognize when they might have a brain injury.

Another interesting fact was the distribution of the symptoms. Generally, post concussion syndrome has three classes of symptoms:

The support we get from our clients and referral sources allow us to support a number of other good causes both in Austin and around the world. Today, I thought I would let you know about some of the programs you’re supporting.

Friends of Scouting

As some you know, my son is a Boy Scout, and he’s had a number of great experiences through scouting. He’s been to summer camps in California and Maine, and this year, he and I are going on a 10 day backpacking trip at the Scout mecca, Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.

But we also know that too many kids don’t get those opportunities. As a result, for the last few years, our firm has made significant donations to Friends of Scouting. This group helps support Scouting opportunities for low income kids throughout Central Texas. I hope some of these kids will get the same benefits that my son receives. You can learn more about Scouting in the Central Texas area by clicking the link here.

Justice For Our Neighbors

Justice For Our Neighbors is a United Methodist Church based non-profit that provides free or low cost legal services on immigration related issues to immigrants. I was one of three co-founders who helped bring JFON to Austin three years ago. Since that time, JFON has served numerous clients. Now, the group specializes in helping unaccompanied minors learn about and exercise their rights. While I acknowledge that immigration is a bit controversial, as a lawyer, one thing I’m clear about is that rights matter. When our country grants people rights, the people should be able to exercise those rights. And that’s what JFON does — helps people exercise their rights.

Free Store Austin

The Free Store is another United Methodist related non-profit that I helped start and that you have helped us support. Like it sounds, it takes items and gives them away to anyone who needs them for free. But the store is about much more than that. The store creates opportunities for volunteers to meet and get to know people who are very different from the volunteers. Creating a diverse community is really what this group strives to create.

Zoe Helps

Zoe is an international group that helps orphans in Africa and other countries become self-sufficient. Zoe organizes the orphans into working groups of 60-100 kids. The organization then trains the kids about health, entrepreneurship, and more. Zoe also helps the kids choose and start businesses. About 85% of the kids who complete the three year program are self-sufficient, help support other kids, and are leaders in their communities. In the last couple of months, Zoe was named one of the 100 most innovative non-profits in the world.

Seedling Foundation

The Seedling Foundation is a local non-profit that provides mentors to children whose care-givers are incarcerated. Mentors meet with the kids once a week to check in the with the kids and to be a consistent, stabilizing force in the kids’ lives. This is my 10th year to be a mentor through the Seedling Foundation, including my eighth year with my current mentee. I started mentoring him in Pre-K and have now moved with him up to middle school. I enjoy the mentoring process and encourage anyone with a little free time to get involved with Seedling.

There are many more things you’re helping us support, but these are some of the biggest. We hope you’ll continue to think of us and refer your friends and family members so we can continue to do this good work together.

This is an older article, which was recently pointed out to me, tries to identify the dog breeds that have attacked the most. The results probably won’t surprise you much. According to the article, the top 5 breeds for most attacks on people are:

Pit Bull

Rottweiler

German Shepherd

Siberian Husky

Akita

These results would follow what we’ve found in our practice. Most of the attacks we see involve either Pit Bulls or Rottweilers. The worst dog attack case we worked on involved a Bull Mastiff, another large dog that has been bred to be a guard dog.

There is a caveat in this article and in my findings. The article is based on a study about reported dog bites or dog attacks. I’m sure there are many smaller breeds who are also involved in a significant number of bites or attacks. But because these dogs don’t do the damage that these dogs can do, the bites or attacks may go unreported. Similarly, when we are asked to represent victims of dog attacks, they are usually from serious injuries, more likely to be caused by big dogs.

To see if others agreed with the dangerous breed list, I did a quick Google search to see what others might be saying. In doing so, I found a couple of results that were a bit surprising.

This article from Europe found that labradors were most likely to be involved in attacks. Part of this might have to do with the sheer number of labradors as pets. In fact, the article noted that the labrador was the most popular dog in Europe.

This article, also from Europe, found that police officers were more likely to be bitten by Jack Russell Terriers.

These articles only go to show that persons should be cautious around any types of dogs. In the wrong situation, dogs of any breeds can attack and cause significant, and perhaps fatal, injuries.

This is another question I’ve recently received from potential clients. They were involved in an incident — a car wreck, a slip and fall, or something similar. They went to the ER, and the ER performed an MRI or a CT san looking for problems, but scan came back negative. Does this mean that the was no brain injury?

Absolutely not.

While an MRI or a CT scan can find some brain bleeds or some damage, they don’t find most problems. As a result, the vast majority of people who have brain injuries have a normal (what we call negative) MRI or CT scan.

Indeed, while insurance companies sometimes try to argue about claims when you have a normal MRI or CT scan, virtually all scientific literature and all neurologists agree that you can still have a normal scan. Not only that, virtually all neurologists will agree that most of the patients they see for brain injuries have normal scans.

So if you feel like you’re off or your family members are telling you that you’re different after a car wreck, a fall, or another event, don’t rule out a possible brain injury just because you had a normal CT scan or MRI. You may very well still have a mild traumatic brain injury that needs to be treated

This is a question I’ve seemed to be answering for clients lately. You are in a wreck or other event. You go to the emergency room. They look you over, they never say anything about a brain injury, and they send you home. Does this mean you don’t have some type of brain injury?

Absolutely not.

Emergency rooms (and even other doctors) are notoriously bad at diagnosing brain injuries. Why is that?

First, emergency rooms are triage facilities. They are only really looking for the things that are life-threatening or need to be treated immediately. Too often, this means that they don’t look for brain injuries unless the brain injury is the type that’s completely obvious.

Second, emergency rooms (and most other doctors) don’t know you. For the most part, there’s not a readily available test that we can use during a doctor’s visit to say whether you have a brain injury. The first time a brain injury is diagnosed is usually based on your complaints of your symptoms and comparisons of how you were before you got hurt to how you are after you got hurt. Doctors can compare your symptoms to common brain injury symptoms, but the doctors have to be looking to put two and two together. And doctors usually don’t know you well enough to compare your condition from before the wreck to your condition after the wreck. As a result, it’s often difficult for a doctor to make the diagnoses of a brain injury.

That’s why I tell clients that it’s so important to have friends and family members look for changes in your condition or behavior. For our clients, we have forms that we give you to fill out that can help figure out what problems you’re having. That way, you’ll be in a better position to articulate to your doctor the problems you’re having and the doctor can more easily and quickly make a referral to a neurologist or other treating physician.